General Discussion

No one is "bandying about the word 'Nazi' at every single conceivable turn" and no one is applying it "with such a broad brush to everyone and everything we find distasteful." It is not being "tossed about casually like bags of peanuts at a baseball game."

Why would anyone mock those who are seeing parallels between this regime and murderous regimes from the past? You are mocking people with those remarks.

Don't call the phenomenon "NazI" if you don't want to. Call it "MAGA." The name you use for it doesn't change what it is. MAGA has very strong parallels to the murderous authoritarian movements in Europe during the 30s and 40s. This is serious business. We are in great danger. You are trivializing it.

By the way, Hitler and his cronies were "habitual liars and degenerates," and "cruel and stupid." You suggest that Trump is a "habitual liar and degenerate," and "cruel and stupid" as if that explains him and means that he is not a murderous dictatorial racist leader of a dangerous political movement.

"Murderous dictatorial racist leader of a dangerous political movement" also describes Adolph Hitler.

"That term used to have a very specific meaning, referring to a very specific genocidal regime in history."

That is just plain wrong. They were Nazis before they came to power, let alone before they were "a very specific genocidal regime in history."

The time to stop fascism is before it becomes "a very specific genocidal regime in history."

We need to compare MAGA to National Socialism in 1932, not National Socialism in 1945, obviously, if we are going to be anything more than disengaged aloof and dispassionate observers. In 1932 people were dismissing and ridiculing those who were sounding the alarm about the Nazis with the same arguments you are using here.

Were over 50% of Germany's population Nazis?

Your "both sides" arguments should all on deaf ears here. No, holding MAGA terrorists legally accountable is not the same as MAGAs terrorizing the rest of us. That should be obvious to everyone here.

"Forcible re-education at gunpoint" - that is called "prison" and "rehabilitation." It does not preclude due process. You are using scare words to mislead people and misrepresent the point of views you don't like. The entire society is held together at gunpoint yet you want to lecture Democrats who want MAGA held accountable and neutered to protect society.

I don't think anyone is saying that MAGA shouild be held accountable, or that the threat should be neutralized so that the "Democratic Party can move forward and win elections."

Calling for eliminating the MAGA threat means "maybe they should register as Republicans themselves, since they are the very thing they're accusing them of being?" Did the postwar Germans become Nazis when they banned the Nazi party and held the Nazis accountable? Of course not.

"It was once used hyperbolically, although hardly ever by the generation of Americans that actually fought the Nazis and witnessed their atrocities firsthand."

That is not at all true. Over the years I heard many WWII veterans, as well as survivors and refugees from Nazi Germany, compare right wing extremism in the US to the Nazis.